


When the shadows fade from my eyes

by notapartytrick



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: AI, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Don't Let Tony Stark Die, Endgame Speculation, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Hurt Peter Parker, Irondad, Parent Tony Stark, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie) - Freeform, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Tony Stark Has A Heart, Venting My Pre-Endgame Angst, death is not the end, i'm sorry y'all, too much angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-26
Packaged: 2020-01-24 15:30:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18574330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notapartytrick/pseuds/notapartytrick
Summary: When Peter arrives back on Titan, he is too late."I’m sorry."The words are empty. The last words he said to Tony were nothing but void.He is the harbinger of death. Here, now, is proof.





	1. The blackness speaks

**Author's Note:**

> I'm seeing Avengers: Endgame in no less than two days and I'm terrified, y'all. This fic was hammered out in one day to assuage my building angst. See you on the other side.  
> (Do not fear, this fic is spoiler free! I haven't seen the film yet...)

 

Dark.

It fills his throat, presses against his eyes, courses through his veins, renders him motionless in a prison that isn’t really there. Nothing is.

But Peter is used to the dark. He’s existed like this for as long as he can fathom. The dark is the only thing here, nothingness the only tangible existence in a universe of negative space.

Here, it’s full of emptiness.

It isn’t scary, not anymore, not after he let the wreaths of shadow take him in their cold embrace and the vapour consume him.

Oblivion. Maybe it is what Peter has craved all his life, his peeled-back eyelids unblinking because the motion is pointless: the dark is absolute and shuttering the windows to the soul will change nothing.

Nothing. Sometimes, it’s better than something, than anything.

But nothing can only last for so long until it ends.

_“Peter.”_

Aunt May had tried a technique on him once, on a day when she’d arrived home from a shift to find him bent desperately over reams of worksheets, head in hands, overwhelmed. Meditation. She’d guided him through it, albeit a little clumsily, conjuring a reality in which he sat on the precipice of a cliff.

_“Peter?”_

The sun had beamed like it had risen just for him, and he could _feel_ its warmth, just like how he could feel the growing warmth of the rock beneath him, thrumming with steadfast energy.

_“I thought I saw him…”_

The moment Peter had opened his eyes and the door to his private universe was slammed shut was one of metamorphosis. The tingling warmth of the sun was still there, just for a few seconds, strung across planes of existence before it retreated once again into ethereality. The light still beamed across his face; he was new in an old world.

But like every good thing in his life, it didn’t last.

_“C’mon, Peter, it’s over now… you can come back…”_

The night following, he’d found himself bowed over again with something even less identifiable and even more terrifying. He didn’t tell May, not this time.

There had been something sweet in the slipping into darkness and leaving behind the horror of Titan, feeling his physical form melt away like leaves and leaves of discarded paper, feeling Tony’s hands gripping his shoulders, the warmth.

And now someone is pulling him out, shouting for him, and he is torn.

 _“Where did he go?_ ”

To feel is a curse.

But what are we if we do not feel?

Peter waits for the voice, some new and innate force intent on following it when it next reaches out for him. _If_ it does.

_“Please, Peter.”_

It does.

It’s as simple as letting the force, the warmth, take hold of him.

When Peter leaves, he wonders if he was ever away.

He must have been somewhere other than this dust-covered plain for a time, because now it’s covered with a red that isn’t from the rock. It’s strewn about the place in dripping splatters.

The first thing he notices as he sheds the blankness of oblivion and re-enters the universe are those marks.

Bloodstains.

The marks of a battle fought and won.

It’s easier to focus on one thing at a time because processing anything more is a terrifying notion.

But- there’s an unfamiliar sensation of hammering inside his ribs, and a rushing of air through his raw throat, and blood has replaced the lead that ran through his veins, and his eyes are burning with the need to close and open and close again against the red-tinted light all around.

Something whistles past his ears. Stagnant breeze.

Peter careens forward onto his hands and knees and throws up, gagging weakly.

He dimly registers his own trembling frame. He’s wearing the Iron Spider suit as if nothing had changed since he was last on Titan. Mask off.

Under his unsteady hands are a billion complexities of earth. His mind is wringing itself out with the madness of it.

So much, and yet there’s something missing.

Where are the steady arms that guided him to the floor a moment, an eternity ago? Where is the stricken face hovering inches, lightyears above his own?

The first slurred word Peter forms is a childish plea for comfort, driven by an instinct wired deep into his primal being to run to the person that could protect him at that moment.

_Tony._

“T’ny?”

Now hands are reaching for him; they’re not the work-calloused hands he knows better than his own, not _Tony_ ’s, and he shrinks away.

Too much. Everything is too much. Peter’s brow hits his knees as he retreats into a foetal position, willing himself to grow younger and younger until he’s microscopic, sinking into ground that’s bafflingly solid.

A single word reaches him. “Breathe.”

He’s hyperventilating. It’s too hard to think about doing everything at once.

The hands reach for him again, foreign still but gentler, easing him out of the tight circle he has drawn himself into with a hand across his knees and another imprisoning his wrists.

The light isn’t so blinding anymore. Peter cracks his eyelids open a fraction and notices the edge of a deep red cloak to his left.

Each breath still sears his lungs, and he’s taking in too many of them. Still, he forces his eyes to open fully and surveys the silhouettes clustered loosely around him. They are silent, as if they’d been attending his funeral.

In front of him is Doctor Strange. He doesn’t quite belong in this world yet; the concern on his face is only partially discernible through a mismatch of features which is impossible to trace the origin of.

Maybe it’s Peter who doesn’t belong. Did he ever?

It’s only once Doctor Strange begins speaking to him that he becomes aware of the tear tracks on his face. “Peter. You’re back. This is Titan. It’s over, we won. We won. Do you understand?”

But Peter doesn’t want to cry, not now. He shifts shaking hands and raises himself up to a sitting position. The movement forces a gasp from his throat.

“Take it slow. You took a while getting out of there. I was there too, remember? You have to wait for it all to go away.”

The hands gracing his shoulders are charged with uncertainty, mirrored in the face of his unwilling comforter.

Strange never liked him. _“If it comes to saving you or the kid, or the Time stone – I will not hesitate to let either of you die.”_

When did that change?

“Where’s…” the words come out as a wheeze. The river of Peter’s throat has run dry though his cheeks are damp, his mind empty of how to express the all-consuming _need_ within him.

Doctor Strange meets his eye. “Take your time-“

“ _Tony._ ” Peter leans into Strange in his effort, repeating again in a whisper: “Tony?”

In an unconscious movement, Peter slips into Strange’s chest in the way he is so accustomed to doing with Tony, face burying itself in an unfamiliar collarbone still cold from Strange’s recent exposure to the dark.

_Tony. Tony. Tony._

“Where is he?” the words are muffled, half-lost in Strange’s shoulder.

He feels Strange stiffen under him and the sun extinguishes itself.

The silence is unbearable. The wind and his thoughts cannot be the only things rattling about his brain any longer. So, Peter fills the quiet with words. Babbling, stuttering, floundering words.

“Tony. Wh-wh-where’s Tony? I need… how did he – he – what’s – where’s T-Tony? Where is- where is he?”

The need is filling him now, surging through him, embodied in adrenaline and strength. Peter pushes upwards, but Strange keeps him tethered to the floor, murmuring, “It’s alright. It’s okay, Peter.”

“No.” It was further from _okay_ than it had ever been. “Tell me. Please, please… Tony.” He speaks like a drowning man pushing for air he cannot find, someone that isn’t holding him, arms that guided him as he fell but aren’t there to help him back up again.

Strange’s mouth is pressed in a tight line, an opening that surely cannot remain sealed forever. But maybe out of it there will not come the saving light Peter yearns for, but only shadows.

The first sob that tears itself from Peter’s chest is primal, brimming with desperation, confusion. These cries for help always get him what he needs, bring Tony rushing to him, fingers weaving through his hair, a hand at his elbow to steady him, a voice gravelly and gentle all at once asking if he’s okay.

He’s not. He’s _not._

When all that follows is silence, Peter breaks down.

There is no one moment for him when grief strikes. There is no sensation like the unbridled force of a meteorite colliding with him, a herald of loss. No single, searing thought, no knife of understanding plunged deep within him that will remain for as long as he keeps it held there.

But he knows now. He knows that those arms aren’t there to help him up. He knows that need is never going to be satisfied.

Tony is gone.

For Peter, grief is a slow ocean sliding over him, like bathwater rising. Inexorable.

His eyes fill with it, and when they can’t hold any more, they release in torrents of sobs.

As Strange tensely holds him, he tells Peter: “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. It was his choice – he had to go to save us. He sacrificed himself.”

“He didn’t have to!” Rage bubbles beneath Peter’s skin; he is yelling now, screaming. “He can’t be – you could’ve – _Tony!_ ”

And when words aren’t enough, he lets out a wordless, endless scream.

Strange’s hands tighten around his upper arms. He keeps murmuring to Peter. “It’s over now. It’s alright. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Peter.”

 _I’m sorry_. The words are empty. The last words he said to Tony were nothing but void.

The horror of it won’t cease building up under his skin; when he can’t contain it any more, will he become the meteorite, devastating everything he collides with?

He already has. He is the harbinger of death; nothing he touches will survive. Here, now, is proof.

He clutches at Strange like a lifeline, sobbing, screaming, imploding.

He’s a galaxy without a star.

“Tony.”

Tony.

_Tony._

 


	2. Light at the end of the tunnel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Each vision drives shards of glass into Peter's eyes, pinning his eyelids away into the blank stare that has been his default since he’d first been swallowed by oblivion, daring him to cry. If he closes his eyes, the nightmares tail close behind.  
> They’re never true. They’re never-  
> “Peter.”  
> The sound of his full name spoken by a voice that should be familiar jerks him out of a days-long stupor.  
> “Don’t be scared, Peter.”  
> “No, no, no, it’s not you - can’t be…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional reminder: this fic is spoiler-free and just speculation about the events of Endgame!

 

Peter might have been sat here for hours. Who knows? Not him. He doesn’t know anything anymore.

He’s caught between realities; the dancing kaleidoscope of recollection and the icy edges of the present. He wishes they’d cut into him, carving so deep they ripped his heart out. A quick end.

He’d be with Tony.

There’s a dim recollection in the back of his mind of the journey home. They’d taken the Milano. Quill, Drax, Mantis, Strange - all tried to lasso the sun and lead it back to him, tried to push food into his hands, told him to sleep. He remained curled up with his back against the wall the entire trip, impossibly small as the infinite galaxy raced by them. When he finally, unwittingly gave in to the clutches of unconsciousness, he awoke, gasping, from a nightmare, to find a ring of distraught faces around him and a blanket draped over him.

When they finally hit solid ground again, Peter had lost the ability to move. Strange had carried him out into the gloomy brightness, one hand hooked under his knees and another curled around his back. He’d bored holes into the ground with his blank stare.

Whatever well of tears which had opened on Titan has sealed up, definitively, leaving him torrid and dead and wishing they would come back.

The Compound is full of disparate Avengers coming and going, and yet it’s unbearably empty without the man who built it. A galaxy without its star.

Now, Peter sits on the floor of the guest room he’d half moved into in the past few months, back against the bed. A Stark pad lies propped up by books to his left, throwing a haze of white across his face. Caught in the light, he is unsettlingly gaunt, and yet the darkness behind his irises is full of ghouls.

The door edges open; Tony leans goofily against the frame, cheek smashed into the wood. His Black Sabbath t-shirt is stained at the hem with motor oil, layered with plaid. There’s a massacred motherboard in his hand and sparks of innovation bursting at his fingertips. He smiles.

“Hiya, bud. Haven’t you been studying long enough in there?”

Peter freezes, hoping the vision will end, hoping it will last an eternity.

“I wanna show you someth-“

And, just like that, he is dust, mingling with the air and joining the countless mites glinting in the crack of sunlight under his drawn blind.

It’s not over yet; a new Tony now taps him rhythmically on the shoulder to draw his attention. “Pete! Pizza just got here, ice cream’s fresh outta the freezer, _Collateral_ is ready and waiting to be worshipped… ready to go?”

 _“Yes!”_ Peter wants to yell. He’d sell his soul for the ability to clasp Tony’s waiting hand and gorge himself on pizza and chocolate cherry ice cream and fall asleep entwined in his arms.

Like they always did.

But he knows now, after days of being surrounded by these illusions, that they’re gone as soon as they came, that no matter how much he pleads with every cell of his being for them to be true, they never are.

They never are.

Each vision drives shards of glass into his eyes, pinning his eyelids away into the blank stare that has been his default since he’d first been swallowed by oblivion, daring him to cry. If he closes his eyes, the nightmares tail close behind.

They’re never true. They’re never-

_“Peter.”_

The sound of his full name spoken by a voice that should be familiar jerks him out of a days-long stupor; a small cry of shock escapes him.

This single word differs from the echoes of his memory for that very reason; the voice doesn’t echo. The analytical part of Peter’s brain deduces that it is issuing from the same speakers as FRIDAY.

Turning abruptly, Peter has to grip the wall to stop himself from falling, from flying.

Before him, materialised and built of the light from the aurora borealis, is _Tony._

_It isn’t real._

But this incarnation of Tony is decidedly _not real_ in a different way to the agonisingly accurate illusions. Peter’s acute eyesight reveals that his form is comprised of billions of tiny lines of glowing code.

A hologram.

But information is not enough to calm the soul; Peter shrinks away, clawing at his eyes, babbling, “Not real, just… it’s – d-d-don’t believe it-“

He presses the heels of his hands into the wall behind him, something sturdy and real to cling to amidst a throng of flickering, immaterial images.

_“Don’t be scared, Peter.”_

The sound of his name spoken in a voice so achingly familiar is enough to bring him to tears, sliding down until he sits curled up once again, hands still pressed over his eyes in a plea to reality to _make it stop._

“No, no, no, no, it’s-it’s not you - can’t be…”

The voice was so gentle it tears him apart. Persistent. _“It is me. It really is. It’s okay, Pete – you can look. It’s just me.”_

Against every self-preserving instinct which screams like a caged animal to run, Peter lets his hands drop, the timbre of his mentor’s voice flooding him with liquid gold, and sees.

This is Tony, no doubt.

This is the Tony known only to a select group, the private Tony. There is the MIT sweater he’d lent to Peter so many times, fussing about the cold; the strange platform sneakers that Peter had always suspected were to make him appear taller; the soft layered shirts he’d memorised the smell of from evenings buried into them.

Peter bawls.

He cries out for the moments snatched away from them. The forgotten birthday present Tony had been hyping him up about for months. The careers day he’d been plucking up the courage to ask him about. The season of Battlestar Galactica unwatched. The casual touches, the hand constantly combing through his hair to the comfort of them both. The _I love you_ s unsaid.

The moments he’d been stupid to ever think to be guaranteed.

He cries out for his _dad_.

And there he is, kneeling slowly in front of the teenager, hands outstretched but unable to make contact, murmuring comfort.

_“Don’t worry, bud. Let it all out. It’s okay. I’m okay. You’re okay. Just keep breathing.”_

Peter draws in a shuddering breath, every fibre of his being crying out to fall into Tony’s arms, a wish he knows cannot be satisfied.

But he’s here. Somehow. Maybe, just maybe, that will be enough.

“How are you here?” he ventures breathlessly.

_“I’m Tony Stark, am I not? Of course I’d find a way to stick around so I can be a pain in the ass for as long as possible.”_

Peter giggles, actually giggles, and it’s a release. Just like the old days.

_“This is my consciousness. I kept it downloaded into an AI sub-system in case anything happened. Pretty neat, huh?”_

Peter nods tearfully, feeling his face crack uncomfortably into a smile. Tony’s hair is ungelled and messy, the way Peter likes it most, and intuition tells him that Tony designed the AI with a particular person in mind.

The underlying concern in Tony’s voice remains as he asks: _“Are you good?”_

“Yeah, I’m – this is crazy.” The near-constant shaking in Peter’s fingers has suddenly ceased.

_“Well, I’ve got something else to show you. Part of your birthday present. Thought we could push it forward a little.”_

Since the day he met the man, Peter’s trust has been infused in Tony, in the angled crinkles at the corner of his mouth when he grinned in that devilish way, in the soothingly rough plains of his palms.

That will never change.

“Show me.”

When Tony rises from the floor, beckoning Peter to follow, he presses his mouth into a firm line, terrified that, like every other vision he’s seen, this incarnation of Tony will slip bittersweetly into the wind.

After two minutes of walking, it does not happen, and Peter allows himself to creak open just a fraction the prison door to his hope.

They’re heading for a storage vault.

“What is this?” Peter’s voice still rasps from disuse.

_“Something I’ve been working on a little while.”_

The door, like a bionic mouth, slides open, and a myriad of synthetic colour is revealed, more perfect, more breathtaking, than any natural phenomenon.

It’s blindingly reminiscent of his arrival back on Titan: the boundless beams of light playing on the inside of his eyelids; the jarring shadow and searing brightness; the countless complexities. Wreaths of glowing code and visuals arc across the midnight-black walls, the ceiling, each position and line constantly updating itself in a dance so all-encompassing Peter can’t even begin to comprehend its working.

He sees, for half a second, an image of himself, which fades as soon as it appears.

And in the centre, a spinning core of innovation, a brainchild of those sparking fingertips: the brain of a genius gifted to a heart of machinery. Infinitely complex.

_“Like it?”_

Words have left Peter. He nods.

_“There’s so much potential in Stark Industries. Really, we were only just getting started. I’m not done with the world yet.”_

A single tear escapes the tight clutches Peter has held his childhood wonder in.

_“Not just Avenger issues but world issues. The Flint Michigan water problem you were talking about over the phone, remember that? We’re starting by fixing that. Providing world aid… whatever you can dream of.”_

“It’s amazing.” _Amazing_ fails to encompass the glory of this boldly throbbing machinery.

Even in death, Tony Stark is a hero.

_“One day, I thought – when you’re ready, if you want to – you might help me out.”_

For a moment, Peter is stunned by the notion, the possibility.

_We could do so much._

The galaxies are in reach. The earth is waiting to be championed.

Before he can agree, Tony cuts him off. _“Don’t make a decision yet. I want to show you something more.”_

At this command, a seal which had left no blemish on the wall just moments ago opens and a sub-room is revealed, again coursing with light, but gentler, calming.

_“It’s tailor-made to keep you chilled out. And secret. Here is where you remake the world. You and I are the only ones who can open it. Thought you might want to keep that secret identity of yours under wraps a little longer. This is your workshop, kid.”_

Not only is the galaxy close enough to touch, the stars are harnessed and held out for him to worship.

* * *

 

The first time Peter Parker re-emerges as Spider-Man, he chooses not to don any of the hundreds of suit combinations Tony had prepared in his workshop. Instead, he unearths the first Stark-designed suit he was given, the suit he wore in Germany.

He takes his time pulling the mask over his head, knowing who will greet him as it comes down.

_“Hey, kid.”_

“Tony.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys... I saw Endgame yesterday.  
> I cried harder than I've ever cried before. But I also laughed, cheered, clapped, and gasped in wonder. Kevin Feige and the Russos have done something really, really special with this one. It was everything I could wish for and a whole host of other things I never even considered.  
> Thank you, fellow fans, for joining me for the ride. The MCU will never be the same, but I hope we can move on in solidarity. I love you all.   
> And thank you, cast and crew of Avengers: Endgame, for delivering an incredible movie.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you all for the support - it means more than you could possibly imagine that people enjoy my work!  
> The next (and final) chapter will be released this Saturday after Endgame is released to the world. I wish you all luck, whether you're able or willing to see it or not. May your characters stay alive and kicking. It's the end of an era and I'm honoured to have shared it with you incredible lot.


End file.
